


This Loneliness is Hard to Deal With

by llrstyb



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Requited Unrequited Love, Reunion Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-19 22:36:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7380190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llrstyb/pseuds/llrstyb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"They took everything from me. My memories. My emotions. My humanity. They took away everything that made me a person. The only thing, Steve, sometimes I feel like the only thing that hasn't been taken from me is my love for you."</p><p>Bucky confesses his love to Steve in a notebook. Steve accidently reads it. </p><p>A Post WinterSoldier reunion fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set after CA:The Winter Soldier and before CA:Civil War.

_ They took everything from me. My memories. My emotions. My humanity. They took away everything that made me a person. The only thing, Steve, sometimes I feel like the only thing that hasn’t been taken from me is my love for you. But even about that, I’m not too sure. How could I be, when I was the one who almost killed you? When I looked at you with my own two eyes, and, with my own body, my own hand, raised a gun at you and shot bullets? When with my own fists, I almost shattered your face. _

__

_ No, I guess even my love for you couldn’t survive what they did. Pity. I always prided myself in that, you know - That my love for you was pure and strong. Even in the forties, when the rest of society was telling me that the things I thought about you, the things I wanted to do to you, those were dirty. But I didn’t care. I knew there couldn’t be anything dirty about it. How could it be possible, I reasoned, that loving someone as brilliant, brave, someone as gentle and kind as you, could be a sin? _

__

_ It’s a pity that I couldn’t tell you back then, that I couldn’t tell you how much I loved you. Because now, the love that I have for you, it’s been dirtied and bloodied and deformed into something ugly and disgusting, and you deserve better than to have to be the safe-keeper for a villain’s heart. You deserve everything that is pure and good in the world, and that, my dear, is something I can be no longer. _

__

_ ********** _

__

_ This world is a confusing one, and I don’t know my place in it. Do I even have a place? I’m afraid of the answer to that question. _

__

_ ********** _

__

_ I miss you. _

__

_ ********** _

__

_ They legalized homosexual marriage. I remember I couldn’t even think the word before, too afraid someone would suspect what was going through my head. I wish I could've married you back then Steve. Even when we were just two reckless kids drifting through life together, I wouldn't have needed anything else in the world if I just had you standing before me at the altar saying "I do." It probably wouldn't have happened, though, even if we were allowed to get hitched. If I had ever gotten up the nerve to ask, you would've just laughed, thinking I was joking. But I never joke, Stevie, not when it comes to you. _

__

_ ********** _

__

_ Sometimes the memories of who I was before they changed me mix with the ones that I have from being a Winter Soldier. And the longer that I am not under their control, the more vivid they seem to become. Like a photograph, that’s ever increasingly becoming clearer and clearer. But the brighter the memories become, the more they get jumbled up in my brain. Yesterday, I remembered your face. You were still tiny. God, you were so small and fragile. How did you survive in that world? _

__

_ I remembered your face – you were smiling – but then, I saw myself as the Winter Soldier shooting you in the stomach. For a second, I thought it was an actual memory, and I almost threw up. It wasn’t, of course. But at that moment, experiencing that flashback - no that hallucination – it was like I was in a dream. And dreams, no matter how crazy and nonsensical they get, you don’t question anything about ‘em. You just go along with it accepting it as reality. And what if that’s what I’m doing right now? What if I’m still trapped there with them, and I don’t even know it? What if I’m just dreaming about this reality where I got to see you again, where we're living and breathing the same air at the same time? What if I’m dreaming of sitting here in this dark room with this dreadful lamp that keeps going on and off and writing these words and soon enough I’ll awaken to find myself screaming in the chair as they, with excruciating pain, steal me from my memories? _

__

_ ********** _

__

_ You seem to be _ __ _ on _ __ _ the news a lot, so I got a TV. They interviewed a lady that you saved in one of the countless battles you’ve fought. She was gushing about how cute you looked. I agree with her. _

_ It made me wonder, seeing this lovely lady with her excited eyes and happy smile as she talked about Captain America, what would the people who were unfortunate enough to cross paths with The Winter Soldier say? But then I remember - they’re all dead. _

__

_ ********** _

__

_ I miss you. A lot. _

_  It’s selfish, I know, but sometimes I hope that you miss me even a fraction as much as I do you. Even though I know that you can’t miss me the way a lover would, with an aching wound in their soul- Even though I know you can’t miss me with the same bloodied, wounded ache that I feel for you, I egotistically hope that you can at least miss me as a friend. That my name pulls on some strings in the back of your mind, and that I’ll cross your thoughts once or twice in a while. _

__

_ ********** _

__

_ I’ve found my new favorite food. Tacos. It feels weird – eating for pleasure. For so long, I was only fed for substance. I also went to a place called Starbucks for the first time today. That’s what normal people do, right? They go out for coffee? I hated it. I couldn’t pronounce anything on the menu, and there was way too much sugar in my drink. I felt claustrophobic like everyone was staring at me. I don't think normalcy is quite for me yet. _

__

_ ********** _

__

_ I’m trying really hard to be normal. I don’t think it’s working. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me from going crazy is talking to you through these writings. But even that’s crazy, huh? Since I’m just talking to myself. You’ll never actually read it. _

__

_ ********** _

__

_ I haven’t talked to another human being in months. Or has it been seventy years? Being ordered to go on assassination mission can hardly count as having a healthy discussion, so I guess it really has been seventy. _

__

_ ********** _

__

_ As always. I love you. I miss you. I want you. I need you. I’m on fire for you. _

__

_ ********** _

_ I have a photo of you that I keep in this notebook. I should throw it out. It only ever brings me pain when I look at it. And yet like an addict looking for the next high, I open to the page I could find in my sleep and every night before I go to bed, I look at your face and embrace the hit to the gut, the heart, the head, and even to the fingertips that it causes me. The pain brings me pleasure. It shows me that, despite it all, I’m alive. Despite it all, I can still feel you. My body and mind still know who you are. It sounds so fucking crazy, but I think it was so easy to remember you, even now when memories of the old _ __ _ me _ __ _ are still shaky and fragmented, memories of you are crystal clear because you have always been with me. I have carried you in the blood flowing through my veins, in the air flowing through my lungs, and in every cell of my body. For some forsaken reason, I have tied you to my soul, Steve, and for that, I’m truly sorry. _

__

_ ********** _

__

_ I miss you _

__

_ I miss you _

__

_ I miss you _

__

_ I miss you _

__

_ I’m losing my goddamn mind without you. _


	2. Chapter 2

His legs felt heavy going up the cigarette laden stairway. Every step was difficult to make - like moving with his feet enclosed in chunks of heavy ice. So tired, he was so, so tired. Today had been another bad day. The one thought that kept him going was knowing that soon he’d be in the apartment and will be able to spill his thoughts into the notebook and pretend like he was talking to Steve; these days it was the only thing bringing him relief – relief from his thoughts, his life, his…everything. 

As he neared the front door of his small apartment, Bucky’s footsteps slowed with apprehension as he sensed a presence behind the thin walls. Steeling himself for a fight with the intruder, he slowly opened the door. A muscled, tall figure – Steve, Bucky realized, it was Steve! His heart soared and simultaneously slumped – turned around and stared at Bucky with wide eyes. 

For a second, the two men stood frozen, one inside the too small living room and the other still at the threshold of the entrance, not knowing what to do and both caught completely off guard. And it was during this one brief second of complete stillness Bucky realized that Steve, with bloodshot and glistening eyes, was…he was close to crying. 

Before he could process what to do with that information, Steve broke the silence first by saying, “I’ve been looking for you for so long.” Moving his hand quickly against his cheek, Steve inconspicuously tried to wipe away a tear. Something in Bucky’s chest ached at the sight. 

Bucky’s pulse started hammering away, because it hit him at that moment, really, truly hit him, that Steve was here in this room. He couldn’t deal with the storm of emotion that was brewing in his chest, so he kept his face impassive, cold. “I know. You always were too noble just to let someone go.”

“I was so worried; you have no idea how worried I was.” Steve’s voice was so hoarse, so sad.

“I know.” Again – he projected no emotion. Just a blank page. But his insides burned so much that he had the silly thought he might detonate the entire building.

“I…” Steve looked around as if trying to find something that will help him get out the words that he needed to say next. He found none, so he turned back to look at Bucky, an apology that he was about to say already visible in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“About what?” Bucky eyed him with apprehension, perhaps exhaustion, as he stood ram-rod straight. The stance was intimately familiar to Steve. It was the stance of a soldier. An individual ready to fight at any given second. But Bucky, even during WWII, even when he was listening to the commands of his direct higher ups, even when he was in the middle of a battle, Bucky never stood like that. He always had a tilt to his pose. To an outsider, it made him seem cocky, arrogant. To Steve, it made him look relaxed, calm. Seeing Bucky now with every muscle of his body tight, Steve’s heart ached. 

“I accidently saw it,” Steve answered. “The journal. It was open and I just, I don’t know. I’m sorry. It caught my eyes and by the time I realized what I’d read, there was no way to unread it.”

“Which entry?” Bucky asked with so much emotion hidden from his voice that it might as well have been a robot who’d asked, but beneath the calm, he was terrified at what Steve had just revealed, terrified to the point of nausea. Stupid, so stupid, he scolded himself. How could he have left something like that laying around? He should’ve been prepared for every situation, should’ve accounted for this very circumstance of Steve standing in his house. Dammit it all to hell; Steve now knew the one thing Bucky promised himself never to share with the man he loved.

When Steve didn’t answer, Bucky pushed, this time, louder with anger, desperation, seeping in, “which one?!” 

“The one where you said you loved me.” There. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, Steve said it. 

“There were quite a few of those confessions. You’re gonna have to be more specific.” 

Steve’s eyes widened just a fraction. “The one where you said- the one where you said that …” he paused, not knowing how to say this next part, “if marriage had been allowed for us in the past, you would have proposed to me.”

Exhaling unsteadily, Bucky closed the front door and walked into the now suffocating apartment, past Steve and headed straight for the only window in the room. Every move was difficult to make thanks to the panic running through his system. He felt Steve’s eyes on him the entire time. The intensity of his gaze sent shivers down Bucky’s body. 

Gripping the windowpane almost painfully tight his hands turned white from the pressure as he allowed himself a moment to close his eyes and breathe in deeply; he kept his back to Steve the entire time. It was a coward’s thought, but he wanted to run, run far away from the man at his back, run away from this situation, and run away from his traitorous feelings.

Small, dirty with dust, and rickety with age, the window only allowed the view of the gloomy, back gray walls of some fast food dine-in. Still, it was the better option compared to having to stand through the no doubt earnest, almost golden-retriever-like expression on Steve’s face as he’ll tell him that he’s sorry, that he loves Bucky as a friend but just doesn’t feel that way. Steve will try to be gentle about it, Bucky figured, but it wouldn’t make it any less painful. Eventually, quietly, he said, “You had no right to do read it.”

Looking down, Steve whispered, “I know, and I’m sorry. But please, you have to believe me, I didn’t do it on purpose. I never would’ve intentionally invaded your privacy like that.”

“Says the man who broke into my home while I was gone.” He turned his head to look at Steve, and there was the slightest hint of a smile on his face. It was a sad smile, the kind one gives when they’re at the end of their rope and completely exhausted. But still – a smile nonetheless. And when Steve smiled back, relief evident on his face, Bucky’s heart broke a little because of how much he had missed that smile. 

As quick as the slight grin came, it just as rapidly left Bucky’s face, and he turned back towards the window. The lighthearted moment between the once close as family friends was once again swallowed up by tense and uncomfortable truth that lay between them: Bucky loved him. And now Steve knew.

Finally turning around and slumping against the window pane, now with more distance between them, Bucky said, “So what now? Where do we go from here?” 

“I don’t know what to do next. But Bucky…” There was astonishment and wonder on Steve’s face. Eyes still a little red from the earlier tears he’d shed. “All I know is, I would have said yes. Bucky, I would have said yes a thousand times over.”

Giving him an anxious glance, he asked, “Would have said yes to what?” Bucky was holding his breath as if not allowing himself to believe.

“If you had asked me to marry you-” Slowly stepping closer to him, Steve’s eyes were glassy with tears again and filled with wonder. “If we had been allowed to – Hell, even though we weren’t allowed, even though it was illegal, I still would’ve married you, you punk.” When he finally reached Bucky, not taking his eyes off him, he said, “I love you, too. I have loved you for so long.”

Speechless, and with trembling fingers, Bucky gently cupped Steve’s face in his hands, his thumb tracing a gentle pattern on Steve’s cheek. Again, he gave that sad smile and allowed himself a moment to take in the man before him. Bucky closed his eyes as if savoring the moment. “You have no idea how long I’ve been dreaming of you saying that to me.”

With almost panicky quickness, as if he was afraid that Bucky would disappear, Steve clutched the hand caressing his face. Bringing it to his mouth, he placed a dozen chaste kisses to his knuckles in between whispering over and over, said, “I love you. I love you.”

The shaky exhale Bucky let out signaled to Steve that something was wrong, and as he looked at the man he just professed his love to, his insides churned because it was not the face of a happy man who just had his love requited. Bucky looked broken, defeated – as if was the worst thing that could have happened. 

“No, you don’t. You don’t love me.” He was shaking his head sadly, as he slipped his hand out of Steve’s grasp. “You loved your best friend. But he’s been gone for years now. When he fell off that damned train, that was the last of him.”

“I don’t believe that,” Having, physically to keep his hand from trying to reach out to Bucky, Steve said, “I can’t believe it. It’s not true! I know you – better than I know anyone, better than I know even myself. And my best friend, the man who followed me to war, who protected and stood by me when no one else did, that man is still standing in front of me right now.”

“Why are you doing this?” Bucky whispered in a voice so tired and broken that Steve felt a wave of emotion rising in his throat, perhaps it was his heart making its way up, deciding that’s it had enough and wants to leave now. Bucky continued, “Why couldn’t you just pretend that you didn’t see that stupid notebook, didn’t see the stupid words I wrote to you in my moments of weakness?”

“Because I love you. And they’re not stupid words - they’re…everything. Absolutely everything to me.” 

Unable to meet his gaze, Bucky hugged his arms around himself and looked down at his feet. “It’s too late for that. Too much, there’s been too much since then. We’re different people now, Steve. Me, especially. I don’t even have all of my memories back yet. Some days I wake up, and it’s like…I have this blank page where my mind should be, my memories and emotions. Sometimes I wake up, and I feel like a robot.”

Steve desperately tried to catch Bucky’s eyes with his own but couldn’t. “That doesn’t mean that you just suddenly stop being you. I know you. And when I look at you now I can still see my best friend, the most amazing person in the world and the one I fell in love with.”

“It's nice that you believe that but it still doesn’t change anything. It would be best if we just stop here. There’s a reason I never came to you Steve, even when I started to get my memories back.”

Not knowing what else to do, Steve, with tears in his eyes, started to beg. “Bucky, please. Please. Come with me. Come…home.”

With a twisted sound that had no resemblance to the soft, melodic laugh that Bucky used to possess once, he said, “Home? My home, that was destroyed decades ago. This place,” he turned to sweep his hand unceremoniously around the small, empty apartment that only had one dull lamp in the corner, “is as much my home as any.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this. You can come back with me to DC.” He’d come so far, and he didn’t even know how to convince Bucky. The shadows under his eyes gave away Steve’s exhaustion.

“How should it be, then?” Bucky asked quietly. A part of Steve, the part that knew the other with an intrinsic sort of understanding, realized that perhaps Bucky was just as tired as him.   
“Should I go back with you to your Avengers? That would go over real well with them, I’m sure. That Iron Man fella, especially. Oh yeah, I’d love to be a part of his team. Wait till I tell him I’m the one who killed his parents.” Bucky paused for a moment his face in a tight grimace. “But fuck him, right? We should just live happily ever after in a little domesticated bliss. Not like you’re living under a microscope of the entire nation. Not like you’re on the news every damn day. Tell me, how much would your little superhero friends, how much would the country and its people, support you when they found out you’re not only sleeping with the Winter Soldier but are shaking up with him in a little home?”

“You’re not the Winter Soldier.” 

“I have been the Winter Soldier for over seventy years. And that is a much longer time then I have been James Buchannan Barnes.” He shook his head and added in a poisonous, self-deprecating way, “James. Buchannan. Barnes. Even the name sounds strange on my lips now.” 

“I don’t care.”

“What?”

“I don’t care,” Steve said, staring straight at Bucky so he’d see the truth in his eyes. “I love you, and none of the other stuff matters. Not the Avengers, not the media, not the fact that you used to be The Winter Soldier. None of it matters. If those are the obstacles keeping you from…being with me, then I just want you to know I don’t care about any of it. You will always come first.”

Bucky shook his head in shock. “You’ve always been stubborn as hell. Did you not hear the part where I said I have been the Winter Soldier for seventy years? Do you not understand? I am not the same person. You are standing in front of a stranger right now professing your love.”

“Then tell me this,” Steve said, with a voice that was equal parts a yell and a plea. “Why did you write those things? If you honestly felt like you were a stranger to me, you wouldn’t have any reason to love me anymore.”

When Bucky didn’t answer, Steve continued. “You’re being a coward. You’re trying to push me away because it’s easier than having to deal with reality.” Steve grabbed Bucky’s shoulders and stepped closer. “If you can look me in the eyes and tell me that you don’t love me, then I’ll leave. I’ll leave right now and never come back- not unless you ask me to.”

Meeting Steve’s eyes, Bucky whispered brokenly, “I can’t do that.”

And there was so much pain in Bucky’s eyes that Steve felt that pain echo in himself as if it was a tangible thing, and he couldn’t stop himself from wrapping his arms around Bucky. “It’s okay. I love you, Bucky. It’s okay.”

Nodding his head, Bucky hugged him back, squeezing his arms tightly around him and burying his head in Steve’s neck. 

Stepping back, but still keeping his hands around Bucky, Steve, tentatively and not wanting to scare off Bucky, asked, “Does that mean you’ll go with me?”

“No. Yes. I- I don’t know.” Bucky clutched at his forehead, feeling a headache coming on and grabbed onto the window pane to hold himself steady as a bout of dizziness overtook him.

“What’s wrong? Is everything okay? Buck?” Steve asked a sense of urgency in his voice. 

“I’m fine. Don’t worry.” Bucky said moving towards the kitchen chair. “Apparently, a side effect of having my mind fucked with for decades means that sometimes I get migraines.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispered and gently stroked Bucky’s head. 

Steve looked so guilty that Bucky chuckled and said, “you know, you don’t have to feel responsible for literally every little thing in the world.”

“I know. But I’m still sorry - sorry that I couldn’t be here for you during the countless times you must have experienced a migraine and whatever other side effects you suffer from because of those bastards.”

When Steve noticed that Bucky was looking at him strangely, as if he was trying to figure something out, he shuffled on his feet, giving Bucky a questioning look. 

Bucky gave a heavy sigh, closed his eyes as if contemplating and then before he could change his mind, quickly stood up, facing Steve eye to eye. “Do you want to stay here tonight?” 

It was almost comical how much Steve’s eyes widened, and before Bucky could take back his offer, he quickly replied, “yes.”

“I’m still not promising anything.” Bucky gave him a stern look. “I’m not going to promise tomorrow I won't kick you out of my apartment first thing in the morning. And I’m definitely not promising that I’ll go back with you to your home or whatever.”

“Okay.” The pure delight beaming from Steve was contagious, and soon enough they were both smiling. Steve said “lead the way,” as Bucky took his hand and led him to the small bed only big enough to fit both of them if they cuddled together skin to skin. 

When they finally managed to fall asleep – after hours and hours of talking and kissing and more talking and crying and laughing, the morning light already seeping through the curtains – Bucky Barnes slept better that than he had in decades.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for reading <3

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading <3 Comments are appreciated and welcome.
> 
> My tumblr is lllrstyb.tumblr.com

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [最難排解是寂寞](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7617988) by [BEVEL](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BEVEL/pseuds/BEVEL)




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